White Hot [antikvár]

Prologue Some said that if he was going to kill himself, he couldn't have picked a better day for it. Life was hardly worth living that particular Sunday afternoon, and most organisms were doing a half-assed job of it. The atmosphere was as thick and hot as breakfast grits. It sucked the energy right out of every living thing, be it plant or animal. Clouds evaporated under the ferocity of the sun. Moving from indoors to out was like stepping into a blast furnace like those in the Hoyles' foundry. At the family's fishing camp on Bayou Bosquet—so named because of the island of cypress trees in the middle of the creek's slow-moving current—a stuffed, six-foot gator basked in the heat of the yard. His glass eyes reflected the glare of the hot sky. The Louisiana state flag hung furled and limp upon its pole. Cicadas were too indolent to make their grating music, although one industrious insect occasionally disturbed the somnolent atmosphere with an attempt that was halfhearted at best. Fish remained well below the surface of the water and its opaque green blanket of duckweed. They kept to the shadowy, murky depths, their only sign of life being the periodic pulsing of gills. A water moccasin lay inert on the bank, menacing but motionless. The swamp was a natural aviary, but today every species of fowl seemed to be napping in its nest, with the exception of a single hawk. He was perched at the top of a tree that had been killed by a lightning strike decades before. The elements had left its branches as naked and white as bones picked clean. The winged hunter eyed the cabin below. Perhaps he spied the mouse skittering among the pilings that supported the fishing